Identifying top football players and springboard clubs from a football player collaboration and club transfer networks

TL;DR

This study constructs and analyzes player collaboration and club transfer networks from top football leagues over fifteen seasons to identify top players and springboard clubs using network analysis techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a novel network-based approach to identify top players and springboard clubs in football using PageRank and betweenness centrality.

Findings

Cristiano Ronaldo identified as top player

Standard Liege identified as springboard club

Network analysis effectively reveals key players and clubs

Abstract

We consider all players and clubs in top twenty world football leagues in the last fifteen seasons. The purpose of this paper is to reveal top football players and identify springboard clubs. To do that, we construct two separate weighted networks. Player collaboration network consists of players, that are connected to each other if they ever played together at the same club. In directed club transfer network, clubs are connected if players were ever transferred from one club to another. To get meaningful results, we perform different network analysis methods on our networks. Our approach based on PageRank reveals Christiano Ronaldo as the top player. Using a variation of betweenness centrality, we identify Standard Liege as the best springboard club.